Add It Up: Poison Versus Body Art

I have found in so many areas of life, people go about their business never tallying up the larger cost of their actions.   The drug user on disability who spends $20,000 per year and wonders why he doesn't seem to have money to live on.  Or the one who spends $800 of their disability check on such poison in the first few days of the month and then complains they only have $200 left for cigarettes and alcohol.   Or speaking of smoking, I don't know how much they cost now, nor how many are in a pack (I'd make a guess of 20?)  but take a guess how many bother calculating, at 7 minutes off your life per cigarette, how much of their life they are losing per day based on how many they consume?  If I'm in a restaurant with a bar, I look at that martini being had, which may be as tasty as candy, and think to myself "how much face paint could I buy for that?"

It's handy for my body art business to calculate in reverse.  "What?!?!  $35 for a design!?!?"  Ok well let's break it down.  You just spent $25 to eat over at that truck, but let's go much more economically for the food,  Let's say $10 per meal and you eat 3 times a day plus a snack or drink of $5.  Each meal only lasts you several hours before you want to eat again.  And gives you pleasure for the 30 minutes you spend consuming it and enjoying the taste.  Ok great so we're at $35 a day for the food.  The body art designs last 3-7 days rather officially, but most customers report 2 weeks on average.  So if you were to spend the $35,  which is pretty conservative for food especially at an event venue.... and multiply that by 14 days, that's $490.

 Well gee, that'd be enough to get all your friends some body art as well!    Even $150 would be a pretty fancy design just for you.   If it lasts only 7 days times 35 would be $245....   So in reverse, take that $35 design divided by 14, would be only $2.5 PER DAY of getting to enjoy that body art, get lots of compliments, even if you weren't at all careful and it came off in 7, that's just $5 a day.  I can see why some people think of it that way, since they've rarely seen any kind of high quality face and body art, they are used to a dot with a face on the cheek and yeah, it would be fairly preposterous to pay that much when it's that rudimentary AND will wash off and or smear.... but when you have a hand-painted piece of artwork applied to your body that's going to last that long....it doesn't seem so expensive then, does it?